How to Measure Success of Arab Revolution: Leopards

Need a tangible way to gauge the success of the Arab Revolution in coming years? Thomas Friedman suggests keeping an eye on the Arabian leopard. He's visiting Yemen, where the government is trying to protect the fast-disappearing cat. "If you visit Yemen in five years and hear that the Arabian leopards are extinct, you’ll know the revolution here failed," he writes in the New York Times. But if the leopard is thriving, people in Yemen probably will be, too.

How does he get from A to B? It's all about the environment. The leopard is at the top of the food chain, but it's struggling to survive as the Arabian Peninsula in general gets hotter and dryer, and the animal's food sources disappear. But this is about far more than the fate of one animal: The new generation of leaders in Arab nations must grasp that they "will never sustainably rebuild their countries’ human capital if they don’t also rebuild their natural capital," writes Friedman. Previous leaders did a horrible job protecting the environment, and current ones can't afford to do the same. "Watch the leopards." Click for Friedman's full column. (More Arab revolution stories.)